Blurred Keys

Paul Williams is appearing on TV adverts for the News of the World saying he has moved to the paper because criminals have gotten worse since when he started out reporting on them.

So, then, it has nothing to do with the reported €250,000 a year — or any other sum of money — the News International-owned News of the World offered him to move from IN&M’s Sunday World?

Crime clearly pays for some.

The Sunday World had taken High Court action in January wanting Williams to serve three months’ notice. However, The Sunday Times reported last month that: “Following talks between the newspapers, the case was settled amicably”.

Meanwhile, in retaliation, the Sunday World are according to its adverts giving away a crime book with each newspaper.

It is wrong gardai are lining up to pressure Evening Herald journalists to reveal the source of its story of a junior minster’s wrong doing. However, at the same time, the newspaper makes it very hard for people to take it seriously.

In a cover story yesterday afternoon, the newspaper highlighted how gardai are asking journalists for interviews, as well as requesting documents. It was a predictable move by the gardai.  There was also at least three comment articles on the issue.

The newspaper, however, makes it hard for people to take it seriously. The city final edition on Tuesday led with a story about an ex-lover’s argument on a street. The ex-lovers are a TV presenter and former model and high-profile developer, but the argument was nothing more than a noisy row. This is the kind of non-story with no possible public interest that the Evening Herald deems fit for its lead front-page story. How can this newspaper be taken seriously?

Entertainment or gossip stories also featured in all of the top four places on the paper’s website at different times when it was checked yesterday and today. What do I expect from the Herald? Is some solid Dublin news too much to ask for? Not too long ago the paper was at least good for that, you could over look it’s tone for some solid news not found elsewhere. This is not to say there is there is no place for entertainment stories, but rather a newspaper should be putting solid news first. And the paper’s editorialising and sensationalism seems to be getting worse.

This may all be viewed a ivory tower commentary. But the Evening Herald is losing circulation on a scale not seen at any other paper tracked by the ABC.  The downward trend at the Herald has also being more constant than most other. The average net circulation for the newspapers is down to 69,351  last year, compared to 104,137 just eight years ago in 2002. People may be reading the paper but fewer and fewer are willing to buy it. Furthermore, only an average of 61,438 people last year picked up the paper at its full price.

Within yesterday’s edition the paper covered the issue of a 30km/h speed limit in Dublin City Centre. The monthly Dublin City Council meeting was held on Monday. A Fine Gael councillor wanted the whole 30km/h zone scraped — even for small streets — so he tabled an emergency motion. Labour Party council members were willing to compromise reverting back to 50km/h on wider roads that were further away from the most pedestrian heavy areas. An amendment was attached to the Fine Gael motion. Both failed to reach the required amounts of votes.

Amazingly the first paragraph of the story covering this council vote in the Evening Herald, read: “A majority of city politicians want to revert the divisive 30kph speed limit — but it is here to stay because they can’t agree on how to change it”. This is nonsense, and clearly an inaccurate account of a highly contentious issue  (It should be noted that the online edition for some reason has a more accurate intro to the same article).

A comment article which appeared below the news story in the print edition was equally twisting of reality. It said: “The one bit of positivity last night was that Mr Slow finally bowed to public pressure when he tabled a motion for an amendment that would allow certain zones to revert to a 50kph limit. But it ended in failure when the number of votes fell short of the required majority.” No context or mention that those councillors who wanted the whole zone removed would not go along with the compromise. This is ill-informed or unbalanced commentary, it’s unclear which, maybe both.

Another thing you miss by not seeing the printed paper is the use of photos. One politician at the centre of the story is pictured, fine. One happy female journalist is shown in a byline photograph, fine. But then you have another female journalist (no byline on the page) in a photograph posing under a 30km/h sign, why? What’s the need for female journalists to be pictured like this? This practice is common at the Evening Herald, among others. How can a paper be taken seriously if it treats one section of its journalist like this?

Then there is also another woman pictured under a list of councillors voting — who is she? There’s no caption. But looking at the list of councillors, one name is followed by “(pictured)”. This councillor is not mentioned in the news or comment article on the page, and is has not being anyway notably vocal on this issue. Can anybody really take the Evening Herald seriously?

Gardai are very likely to have used current data retention laws to look at the phone records of the journalists in questions. Like the new wider Data Retention Bill which in its final stages before the Houses of the Oireachtas, no court order is need for this. So where do the paper stand on this? We were expecting to find nothing on the Evening Herald’s website about data retention, but there was a telling article about the paper’s position.

An opinion article without a byline – possibly an editorial — is headlined “Cack-handed Greens have made themselves look wobbly on crime” (Thursday, July 16, 2009). It said: “Eamon Ryan then let it be known that he’d fought bravely with the minister for justice to secure “significant changes” to the crime legislation on data retention published earlier this week”. This type of law has being passed in recent years in the name of tackling gangland crime and terrorism.

Of course the problem with this cheerleading of the Data Retention Bill and the then criminal justice bill, which the article also mentions, is that these types of laws have too wide of a scope to be abused. The Herald said, “all the evidence suggests that this is a bill the public wants to see passed right away.” But it’s this kind of law which now allows gardai to look at journalists phone records without court orders. The cheerleaders of bad laws do not have the moral right to cry when the kind of laws they promote are turned on them. Should anybody have any sympathy for them now?

The Press Ombudsman said last night his role was to take both sides extremely seriously, but some complainants contacting his office about newspaper articles are unreasonable and should grow up a bit.

“I sometimes get the feeling that complainants are a little bit unreasonable, that they should grow up a bit. We live in a rough old world where things are not perfect, taste is not always exquisite, language is not always polite, and as grown up people we have to learn to live with that,” said Press Ombudsman John Horgan.

Speaking to the Journalism Society at Dublin City University, he said sometimes people have to be reminded that just because somebody is offended by a newspaper article does not mean a breach of the Code of Practice for Newspapers and Periodicals has occurred.

“The newspaper that does not offend anybody ever is the newspaper that is probably not doing its job properly. But there’s a kind of feeling around that some people think that people who are offended feel that and offence has been created and somebody’s got to be punished for it. Preferably severally, preferably as soon as possibly,” said Mr Horgan.

The Office of the Ombudsman has received around 350 complaints in each of its first two years, 2008 and 2009. Mr Horgan said for every 100,000 people of the Irish population his office gets just over nine complaints, that compares to just over six complains per 100,000 people to the UK Press Complaints Commission.

“When you control for size you get a little bit more complaints than they do in Britain, but you can’t draw any great conclusions from that,” he said.

Defending the process where complainants first have to contact the newspaper directly, he said, “This sounds like passing the buck, but it’s not. Editors really want the chance to deal with complaints them self… and the newspapers do deal with them increasingly seriously because they know if they don’t satisfy them they can come back to us and then it goes up a notch.”

He said, “I’m an ombudsman, I’m not a consumer representative or consumer advocate. I may become so in certain cases, where I think that the complainant really has had a raw deal.”

In only one case so-far has the Ombudsman decided to take on a case without the complainant first talking to the newspaper. He said this was because the person was extremely upset, and really did not want direct contact with publication.

On if the Press Ombudsman was lacking “teeth” or effect sanctions, he said ask any editor or journalist and see what they say. The only sanction available is to get a publication to publish the Ombudsman’s decisions in full, without being edited.

“People say a slap on the wrist, it does not matter. Sitting where I sit it does not seem like that. And if you really think that it is a slap on the wrist ask editors and journalists who have been affected by it,” he said.

If more power was give to his office it would have have to be given in law, and he said that would be the “thin edge of a very big wedge” of government influence of the press.

He pointed to privacy as a big issue, saying that privacy was like an “ice cube, once melted it cannot be reconstituted.” But on the other hand, his office has received complaints about courts cases which are a matter of public record.

DCU’s Journalism Society are due to upload a video of the talk, we’ll link to that after it becomes available.

The Journalism Society at DCU is to host two talks in the next week. This evening Press Ombudsman, John Horgan, will speak on the importance of journalism in the 21st century. And, on Monday, BBC journalist Alan Johnston will speak about his career, which includes stints in Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and the Gaza Strip. For more details see: journosoc.com.

Ben Goldacre, of Bad Science fame, points to The Sunday Times publishing “some pretty desperate climate pseudoscience.”

At the weekend an article, by the Times’ science and environment editor Jonathan Leake and included in the Irish edition of the paper, was headlined “World may not be warming, say scientists.” It claimed “The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge with scientists casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising inexorably because of human pollution.”

However, Leftfootforward.org says the organisation named in the article is a global warming skeptics group, while one of the authors of the mentioned report is “a leading climate denial blogger and somebody without any climate science credentials.”

The Irish Daily Mirror named Eamonn Lillis’s 17-year-old daughter even after the judge warned the media not to identify her due to her age.

SEE: Paper ordered to donate over error, The Irish Times - Saturday, February 13, 2010

In The Irish Times, barrister Damian Byrne, says how the Mahon v Keena and Kennedy result last year changes Irish courts’ position of the protection of journalist’s sources:

Protection of sources now has courts’ imprimatur
The Irish Times - Monday, February 15, 2010

“…The right of a journalist to protect the  confidentiality of sources has now received the imprimatur of the Irish courts in the case of Mahon v Keena and Kennedy…”

“The judgments of the High Court and Supreme Court in Mahon v Keena and Kennedy are very much at odds with older Irish authorities such as Re Kevin O’Kelly. An important caveat is that the right of non-disclosure does not seem to have been challenged or contested in this case, and Re Kevin O’Kelly was not considered. The O’Kelly ruling can probably no longer be regarded as good law in light of the enactment of the 2003 Act [the European Convention on Human Rights]. There is still no question of journalists enjoying an absolute privilege against disclosure. They will still be compelled to reveal sources by a court if disclosure is deemed justified “by an overriding requirement in the public interest”.

Deirdre de Burca’s public letter to Green Party leader John Gormley today makes it clear that she is leaving the Green Party Parliamentary Party and from the Seanad because the party has lost its way.

There seems to be a mixture of reporting at the moment, but at least some of it does not even mention the fact her move comes just after she was rejected for a job with Ireland’s new European Commissioner, Maire Geoghegan-Quinn. Some breaking news text reports online, for example, mentions it, but do so near the middle or end of long articles. No story that Blurred Keys could find on Google News leads on the angle, or even mentions it in the first few paragraphs.

But it all just seems like a distraction tactic from the real news here: De Burca was rejected by Maire Geoghegan-Quinn and then de Burca quits. That, however, would read ‘politician rejected for job angry at party,’ and that’s hardly ground-breaking news.

Her swipes at the party don’t seem that believable given that she was — just before her rejection — willing to quietly take the job with Maire Geoghegan-Quinn. Even if her grievances are believable, what she is saying is coming from a debased position (a position which is not clearly being reported). It looks nothing more than a PR move. The Phoenix reported yesterday that her leaking of the story that she was to get a job with the European Commissioner backfired, it could be the reason she did not get the post. Will this new move backfire?

Irish politics may need fixing, but this — nor George Lee’s departure earlier in the week — are firm bases for such reform.

PHOTO: Green Party / CC BY-ND 2.0

Blurred Keys is going to be updated again. No promises for how long, but, for now, expected updates at least once or twice a week.

A special thanks to The Sunday Times and the very few others who noticed we were gone.

The Irish Times reports: “The Supreme Court has upheld an appeal by Irish Times editor Geraldine Kennedy and public affairs correspondent Colm Keena against a court order requiring them to answer questions from the Mahon tribunal about the source of an article about former taoiseach Bertie Ahern”.

Justice Nial Fennelly pointed to the High Court giving great weight to the journalists actions of destroying documents leading to an “erroneous approach”. RTE is reports that Justice Fennelly said it was ‘very difficult to discern any sufficiently clear benefit to the Tribunal from any answers to the questions they wish to pose’

The new judgement is seen as giving greater legal protection to journalist’s right to protect their sources.

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